A book about the French scholar who unlocked the secrets of ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics by deciphering the Rosetta Stone 200 years ago has been
preempted by executive editor Dan Smetanka at Ballantine for a
"significant" six figures for world rights.
The offer was based on a proposal by Columbia-trained writer and historian
Daniel Myerson, for a book to be called, "The Linguist and the
Emperor", and both Smetanka and agent Noah Lukeman noted its
kinship with last year’s surprise hit, "The Professor and the
Madman" by Simon Winchester, about the creation of the Oxford dictionary.
Myerson’s story centers on the obsessive intellectual Francois
Champollian, one of the scholars Napoleon took with him when he conquered
Egypt, and his years of struggle to decipher the mysterious writings in the
ancient Egyptian tombs. He eventually went mad, and his researches were
published by his brother after his death.
Smetanka is expecting a manuscript in about a year, having beaten several
publishers to the punch with his offer. The sale was the first made by Lukeman
since he recently sold his agency to AMG/Renaissance, as previously reported
in Rights Alert.